Wal-Mart's shelf-correcting system is model for government

About the Author

Anyone
who's ever filed a tax return or visited the Department of Motor
Vehicles understands that government does two things well: spends
our money and wastes our time. Unfortunately, both traits were on
display during the response to Hurricane
Katrina.

A House
select committee headed by Rep. Tom Davis (R-Va.) says the
government displayed "fecklessness, flailing and organizational
paralysis." The committee report lays out 90 flaws in the Katrina
response and notes that all levels of government failed.

Oh, plenty of money was going out. Last September, the federal
government was spending about $1 billion per day -- and it
generated plenty of waste. The Federal Emergency Management Agency
handed thousands of checks (for $2,000 each) to charlatans.

FEMA also wasted money on housing. It spent $236 million to rent
three cruise ships for evacuees. The ships were never more than
half full. And don't forget the manufactured homes, some 10,777 of
which are rotting away in Arkansas because FEMA ordered more than
it needed.

As Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) explained, the waste happened
because the government took a "pay first, ask questions later"
approach.

The federal government has promised to fix its problems. Michael
Chertoff, secretary of Homeland Security, says he'll deliver "a
fully integrated and unified" department before the next hurricane
season. Fine. But let's remember, not all answers can be found in
Washington.

It would be better to look toward an institution that didn't fail
during Katrina: Wal-Mart.

The world's largest retailer had 171 facilities in the path of the
storm. But as Jason Jackson, the company's director of business
continuity, told a Senate committee, "We were able to recover and
reopen 83 percent of our facilities in the Gulf area within six
days."

One key reason for Wal-Mart's success, Jackson said, is
"associates who are dedicated to their communities." That local
connection helped it deliver goods when government failed. As
Investor's Business Daily reported in September, "While local and
federal groups suffered communications problems and bickered over
who was in charge, Wal-Mart sprang into action."

And while Chertoff admits Katrina caught the government
flat-footed, Wal-Mart is always ready. In his book The World is
Flat, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman wrote, "The minute
Wal-Mart's meteorologists tell headquarters a hurricane is bearing
down on Florida, its supply chain automatically adjusts to a
hurricane mix in the Florida stores." That means plenty of
non-perishable food and critical items such as generators appear in
stores even before disaster strikes.

Wal-Mart has plenty to teach the government. "When FEMA or another
agency places a blanket order of 100 trailers of water, we often
question if the person placing the order really knows what 100
trailers of merchandise looks like," Jackson testified. "Usually
the answer to this is that the person making the order was given a
dollar amount to spend, and they do not comprehend the size of this
order or what it means."

Wal-Mart does what government intervention can't: It drives down
prices and makes life better -- in New Orleans and, soon, in
Chicago.

The company opened a store last month in Evergreen Park (where I
was born), after the City Council refused to allow it inside the
city limits. Some 25,000 people applied for the store's 325 jobs,
which suggests Wal-Mart is popular with employees as well as
consumers.

After Katrina, even Wal-Mart's critics sang its praises. "It's
hard to imagine any government program matching the efficiency of a
Wal-Mart," wrote consulting firm Lynch Ryan on its Weblog, adding,
"Government has a lot to learn from Wal-Mart."

Unless we change our approach -- bringing in more private, local
expertise and less federal bureaucracy -- we'll be reminded of that
the next time disaster strikes.

Ed
Feulner is president of The Heritage Foundation
(heritage.org), a Washington-based public policy research
institute.